


Jumping Ship

by Warp5Complex_Archivist



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-05
Updated: 2006-03-05
Packaged: 2018-08-16 00:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8080246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warp5Complex_Archivist/pseuds/Warp5Complex_Archivist
Summary: Reed's got 'sues after 1.22 "Vox Sola" and 1.24 "Desert Crossing." (07/01/2002)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Kylie Lee, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Warp 5 Complex](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Warp_5_Complex), the software of which ceased to be maintained and created a security hazard. To make future maintenance and archive growth easier, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but I may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Warp 5 Complex collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Warp5Complex).

  
Author's notes: The inspiration for this story came from the "Challenge in a Can" page of the great Linguistics Database site. The challenge was: "Malcolm. Helmet. Melancholy."  
  
As always, a major thank you to my super-rocking beta and sister. Couldn't have done it without you.  


* * *

Malcolm Reed sat on the bench in _Enterprise's_ kitting room, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, fingers lightly gripping the bronze-colored pressure-suit helmet. It swung back and forth gently in his hands, the visor reflecting his face like a distorted mirror, his features growing larger and smaller as it moved.

He hadn't looked at the time, but easily figured he had come off shift about two hours ago. The safety checks he had come in here to perform on the suits were long-since finished. There was no reason for him to still be here.

"Bloody hell," he whispered, watching his reflection as he spoke, "bloody hell. God damn." He pronounced it 'gawd-damm', the way Trip would. The way Trip liked to tease him with his Southern accent, making it more and more broad until the vowels were pulled to the breaking point and Malcolm couldn't help wincing. Then Trip would laugh, with the same delight each time, as if the joke were brand-new each time he did it.

"God damn," Malcolm whispered. The empty reflection seemed to laugh at him.

He heard the door to the kitting room slide open but he didn't move. Normally, he knew, he would have jumped to his feet, put the helmet back and made a show of doing something useful. He liked to keep himself to himself, firmly believing that one's problems should be dealt with on one's own. Normally he would have done his best to present his usual veneer of aloof efficiency; maybe cracked a joke if it were someone he knew well. But pretending everything was fine would take too much effort right now. And he couldn't pretend, anyway. He'd never been much good at pretending.

The tiny metallic jingle confused him for a moment, then Porthos ran up, ears flopping as the small dog trotted along the deck. Porthos bumped happily into his legs, sniffing with great interest at the tops of Malcolm's boots. The reflection of the dog's muzzle in the visor looked monstrous and threatening.

"Malcolm," the voice was gentle. "He's going to be okay."

"I know," Malcolm said. He didn't even look up as he spoke, which he knew was both rude and insubordinate. The light played in soft gold over the crown of the helmet, moving like ripples as he tilted it back and forth. It just felt too difficult to lift his head right now. It had felt too difficult for hours.

"He'll be asking for you," the same gentleness, no rebuke whatsoever in the captain's tone. "You should go to him."

"I know." _Why does he have to be so bloody nice?_ The light played back and forth across the top of the helmet, shining bright gold like a sun over desert; like a merciless, killing sun.

Porthos gave Malcolm's boots one more sniff, gave the top of one an experimental lick, then shook his ears and trotted back to Jonathan. Out of the corner of his eye Malcolm could see the captain crouch down to stroke the beagle's back. Jonathan was in jeans and a sweatshirt, so day shifts were indeed over, then.

Jonathan looked up, still petting his dog, trying to look the armory officer in the eyes. Malcolm didn't look back at him. In his hands the light on the helmet moved back and forth, back and forth, tilting crazily like his reflection.

"It wasn't your fault, Malcolm." Jonathan said. He still hadn't moved from his position by the door, one arm resting on his raised knee, the other hand now massaging the skin between the beagle's ears. He gave no indication of wanting to come any closer, as if the lieutenant had set up his newly invented EF barrier between them.

"I know," Malcolm said. His voice was measured, quiet, even. There was no need to shout. "I am actually perfectly aware that I have done everything to the best of my abilities to keep you and the commander out of danger." He was still looking at the helmet as he spoke, imagining his voice bouncing off the smooth surface to hit and shatter against the surrounding walls. _Like my heart. I'll bet my heart would shatter like that. Just as well._ He looked up at the captain, smiling in a way that he knew showed a lot of feral teeth and not much else. "That is, after all, in my job description." He sounded horrendously pompous, he knew, on the verge of out-Queen's Englishing his almost insufferably proper Queen's-English father, if such a thing were even possible. _The old man would be proud,_ he thought, except that Malcolm knew he was using this absurdly formal language as a kind of self-protection, as if he could stack words like a fortress, keeping everyone out.

He heard the captain sigh; heard, in the surrounding silence, the click in the older man's knee joints as he rose to his feet. Porthos had been sitting on the floor, now he got up too, face tilted up in content expectancy.

"You can't keep beating yourself up over this. It's crazy. You can't anticipate everything, Malcolm—no one can." Jonathan was leaning against the doorframe now, arms crossed over his chest. His voice wasn't quite so gentle now, creeping towards exasperation. "I don't want you skulking around down here because of some kind of misguided guilt."

"On the contrary, sir," Malcolm said, "I am completely cognizant of the limits of my abilities." Good lord, but Trip probably would have thrown up if he'd heard Malcolm saying that. He stood slowly, setting the helmet carefully aside as if it were some delicate instrument and not a piece of armor. When he stood to face Jonathan he automatically moved into the 'at-ease' position, legs shoulder-width apart and hands clasped loosely behind his back. Which meant it would be that much harder to give in to his fury and take a swing at the man, something the still-rational part of his mind knew Jonathan hardly deserved.

"Then would you mind telling me why you've been hiding down here for the last three hours?" Jonathan looked perplexed and frustrated enough to spit. Malcolm felt sorry for him. The poor man didn't deserve to be treated like this, certainly not by a subordinate. This wasn't _his_ fault, after all. But Malcolm would have rather torn his tongue out than enlighten him.

"Yes, sir," he said evenly, "I would mind. Very much."

Jonathan blinked, then his eyes narrowed slightly. "I could order you to, you know." He shook his head before Malcolm could even react to that, one hand raised to stop any response before it came. "No, I'm not going to do that, Malcolm." He sighed. "Just...if you feel you'd like to talk, I'm here, okay?" He gestured to the dark, empty kitting room around them, the bronze spacesuits packed in their alcoves like inhuman sentries, "you don't need to..." He sighed again. "You don't need to be down here."

"Understood, captain," Malcolm said. He knew he should have added 'thank you', but the words stuck like quills in his throat. He just looked at Jonathan, face quiet and serene as he could manage, until Jonathan finally shook his head in resignation and turned away, whistling for Porthos to follow him.

"Go visit Trip, lieutenant," Jonathan said over his shoulder as he left, Porthos happily padding after him, "That _is_ an order."

"Yes, sir," Malcolm murmured. He glanced back at the helmet before he left the kitting room. It sat alone on the bench, dark visor as reproachful as a scowl.

"Bloody hell," Malcolm said. He picked up the damn thing and shoved it back into its locker.

* * *

"I told ya before, Malc—we gotta stop meeting like this," Trip said, "people will talk." He laughed at his own joke, though to Malcolm his voice sounded frighteningly hoarse. He looked surprisingly healthy, despite the almost unholy red color of his badly sunburned skin. He was shirtless, sitting up in the bio bed. His chest looked unnaturally pale next to the red of his face and hands. There was an I.V. line running into his right arm; a slight bruise on his left arm where the doctor had removed a second I.V. mere moments ago. A cool mist was being sprayed constantly against the commander's skin, to bring down his internal temperature—something that in other circumstances Malcolm knew he would find decidedly appealing.

This was definitely not other circumstances. He didn't laugh when Trip did. He didn't even smile.

If Trip noticed his silence he said nothing. He reached for a plastic bottle of luridly colored liquid, which Malcolm wordlessly handed to him, and drank hungrily until half of it was gone. Malcolm glanced at the bottle dubiously as he took it back to place it on the nearby table.

"To help replace my electrolytes," Trip explained. "It tastes better n' it looks." He reached for it again, all but snatching it from Malcolm's hand. "Damn, I'm thirstier n' hell."

"I'm glad you're going to be all right," Malcolm said. He was, God help him, possibly more than the commander would ever know. He wanted to reach out and smooth the wet hair off of Trip's forehead. He wanted to take Trip in his arms and hold him and hold him and hold him until he could really convince himself that Trip was alive and healthy and okay. He had nearly lost him twice in as many weeks. It meant everything to him that Trip was still here, that he was really going to be all right.

But he was about to lose him again, for real this time. _But at least he'll still be alive. I can survive this—I can survive anything—as long as he's still alive._ Maybe if he told himself that a few more hundred times he'd actually begin to believe it.

Trip finally finished the bottle. Malcolm took it from him and placed it gently on the table.

Trip looked at him quizzically. "You're very talkative."

Malcolm smiled. At least it was something a bit like a smile. "You love him, don't you?"

Trip just looked at him, smiling crookedly as if any second he expected to be let in on the joke. "Who?"

Malcolm's face darkened. "I'm not stupid. You don't have to protect him. I'm perfectly aware of what's going on."

"Well, that makes one of us," Trip said. He was getting angry himself now, and Malcolm had to force down a pang at upsetting him. "I don't suppose you'd care to let me in on it."

Malcolm felt the anger rising like a snake coiling up his spine. _That's it, Malcolm—anger's so much better than self-pity, isn't it?_ "I had no idea you were so accomplished a liar—did Archer teach you that?" The sheer vitriol in his voice shocked him as much as his words. Inwardly, he cringed, wishing he could erase everything he just said. Outwardly he kept his face calm, waiting for Trip to finally admit what Malcolm had known for days.

Trip's eyes widened as if he'd been struck. He coughed, as if his abused body had no room for shock, and it was all Malcolm could do not to reach for him.

"Malc," Trip said, "what the hell is wrong with you?" He looked so surprised and hurt for a second Malcolm almost believed Trip really didn't know what he was talking about. Then the engineer's mouth dropped open as he came to some kind of realization. "You think I'm in love with the _cap'n?_ "

"Aren't you?" Malcolm's heart was thumping so hard he was surprised all the instruments in sickbay weren't picking it up; it took a lot of effort to keep his voice calm.

Trip ran his fingers through his already messy hair, making it worse. "I'm in love with the cap'n?" He made it sound impossible, inconceivable. "What on God's green earth would make you think that?"

"The creature." Malcolm snapped. He knew his face must be at least as red as Trip's with anger, but he didn't much care. "That creature that got into the hold. Rostov told me it made you..." He could barely make himself say it. "He told me it made you share thoughts."

"Yeah," Trip snorted. "Water polo. It was friggin' beautiful."

"You've been friends for years," Malcolm insisted. Far longer than he had even known either of them. "I'm sure it was more than that."

"Ask Rostov," Trip retorted. "Hell," he snarled, "ask Kelly while you're at it—I'm sure whatever deep, dark intimate secrets we shared reached them too." He shook his head, looking disgusted. "Sweet Jesus, Malcolm. The cap'n and I almost _died_ then—if it hadn't been for you and Hoshi we'd be some alien goop right now—and all you can think about is what me an' Archer _might've_ shared while we were linked up? And that somehow changes our relationship? Changes _anythin'_ about me an' you?" He looked like he didn't know whether to laugh or scream, upset enough that his southern accent had gotten stronger. Abruptly he turned away. "Go away. I don't wanna deal with this now."

Malcolm was dumbfounded. "What...?"

"Go away," Trip repeated. He threw his left arm over his eyes. "I'm tired. I've spent nearly 48 hours fryin' in a desert and I'm tired and I don't wanna listen to this bullcrap. Go away. We'll talk later."

"Very well," Malcolm rasped. His throat was almost too tight to let him speak. He got up and left sickbay. He didn't look back. Trip didn't watch him leave.

* * *

Malcolm lay on the bed in his quarters, staring up at the monochrome ceiling and trying not to think of anything. His shift had finished only about half an hour earlier, but it was one of the few times he had left the bridge and gone right to his billet. He hadn't even bothered to change out of his uniform. He'd just kicked his boots off and flopped onto the bed.

His day had been awful, but the night before was worse. He'd barely slept, and what sleep he did have was filled with nightmares, the kind he hadn't had for years: his entire training squad died because of a stupid mistake he'd made; or his sister drowned while he was trying to find a boat; or Trip and Archer had burned to death in an endless desert because Malcolm had forgotten how to fly the shuttle that was meant to go and rescue them. The kind of dreams where he would wake with his heart pounding hard enough to hurt, having to convince himself each time that none of it was real. Eventually he'd just gotten up, gone to his shift hours early.

The entire day had passed as a miserable gray blur, with nothing important enough happening to either distract him or force him to concentrate. The captain kept giving him sympathetic looks, as if he knew exactly what was going on. Maybe he did. God knew Trip probably told the man everything.

He remembered that at some point Dr. Phlox reported Commander Tucker was well enough to be released from sickbay.

The door to his quarters slid open abruptly, responding to his own pass code. Malcolm turned his head to see who the intruder was, though there was only one person it could be. Trip stood there, in jeans and a green t-shirt, his arms crossed and eyes glaring. Malcolm noted dully that the shirt brought out beautiful highlights in the engineer's eyes, but made his sunburned skin look even worse. "Christmas colors," he murmured.

If Trip had even heard that he ignored it. "Okay, Malc, let's hear it: What the hell's goin' on."

It was an order, not a question, but Malcolm was too exhausted, too drained to even feel angry. He just felt sick inside, hollow, like he could plunge his fist right through the skin and come out with nothing. "Why are you even here?" He asked.

"I told you we were gonna talk about this," Trip said, as if he were explaining something obvious. "You're convinced I'm about ta throw ya over for Jonathan."

"I don't blame you," Malcolm said softly. This wasn't the kind of thing that should be said lying down, so he got up heavily and stood beside the bed. "I really don't. I mean, you've known him so much longer, and he's always been there when you needed someone the most..." Malcolm gave a shuddering sigh. It hurt to admit it, it hurt a lot, but he was no coward and saying it himself meant at least that he didn't have to hear Trip say it. "And I wasn't there. It wasn't me." He swallowed. His throat was aching but at least he'd said it. "I just want to tell you that I understand. And I'm sorry."

Trip looked staggered, horrified. "You're...breakin' up with me?"

Malcolm blinked. "Aren't _you?_ "

Trip shook his head, eyes still wide and confused. "No! No! O' course not!" He strode forward, taking the younger man by the shoulders, making Malcolm look him in the eye. "That's what I've been tryin' to tell you! There's _no one else,_ Malcolm—not Jon, not anybody!" He suddenly pulled Malcolm into a fierce hug. "What the hell's got into you?"

"I've _seen_ you with him," Malcolm insisted. He felt Trip's shoulders stiffen and he pushed himself away, keeping the Commander at arm's length. "The way you look at each other, how you're always the first person he talks to when he's upset, the way you share jokes I don't even bloody well understand!" One of his eyes was wet, and he swiped at it angrily with his palm. "I saw how you leapt for him when that creature grabbed him down in the hold—like you didn't give a damn if you died right there, so long as you kept hold of him." He had to take another deep breath before he could continue, but Trip stayed silent, watching him, his face unreadable. "I saw the way he looked at you, when T'Pol pulled you into the shuttle out of the desert. I know you would have died out there, if it weren't for him. I could see it." His voice sounded resentful and bitter and he hated himself for it. "You love him, Trip. I know you do. And he loves you as well. So why continue with this? Why—Why do this to me?" He was pleading now, trying to crack something in Trip's inscrutable expression, trying to make him understand. "Why do this to me?"

"Oh my God," Trip said. He looked amazed; his sky-blue eyes the saddest Malcolm had ever seen them. "Malcolm," his voice was husky, and he reached out and smoothed his fingers through the lieutenant's hair. "Malcolm, haven't you ever had _friends?_ "

"Of course," Malcolm said, not understanding. "When I was in school-"

Trip just shook his head. He smiled, though it looked to Malcolm like his heart were breaking. "I mean a real friend," he said. "A _best_ friend. Like the cap'n and me."

Malcolm's smile was tentative. "Well, there's you..."

Trip leaned in and kissed him. Gently and with such love Malcolm gasped when he finally pulled back. "I love you," Trip said simply. "I love you more 'n my life. Nothin' is ever going to change that." He cupped Malcolm's cheek with his palm. "I don't ever want you thinkin' otherwise." He smiled at the stunned expression on the younger man's face. "Jon's my friend. He's my best friend, an' he always will be. I've shared more with him than I have with anybody. 'Cept you. There's things he knows about me that likely no one else ever will—and me about him. I do love him. O' course I love him. He's got a piece of my heart." At Malcolm's look he grinned. "But you got the rest of it. And my soul, too."

Malcolm swallowed. He could barely speak. "You really mean that?"

"Cross my heart 'n hope to die."

Malcolm collapsed against him, finally returning Trip's embrace with all of his strength. It felt like the tension he'd been carrying for days—weeks, really—was finally fading away, and he wasn't sure how much longer he'd even be able to stand. "I didn't know," he said hoarsely, "I didn't know it could be like that." He looked up into Trip's face. "You can feel that way, about a friend?" He swallowed. "Do you feel that way about _me?_ "

"No," Trip said, smiling gently at him. "What I feel about you is different. And stronger." He grinned. "'Wouldn't change it for the universe."

"Oh God," Malcolm said suddenly, "oh God—Trip, I've been such a bloody fool."

Trip chuckled and planted a quick kiss on his forehead. "S'okay—happens to the best of us."

"Oh God," Malcolm said again. He pushed himself gently away from Trip, though this time he still held one of his hands. "The poor captain—I've been an absolute monster."

"Don't worry about it—he already talked to me." Trip winked. "I tell him about you all the time."

Malcolm paled. "Good lord."

Trip burst out laughing, "that's what friends are for."


End file.
